Literary structure and conceptual structure must never be separated. 30
Describing his method of study for Latin Patristics, Hadot has invoked an exceptionally illuminating analogy, comparing what happens in these studies lo what takes place in those curious paintings where one secs at first sight a landscape that seems to be composed normally.
One thinks that if there is, in such and such a place in the picture, a house or a tree it depends solely on the imagination of the artist. But if nnc looks at 1he whole painting from a certain angle the landscape 1r111111form11 it11clf into 11 hidden figure, a face or a human body, and one 11mlcr11t11nll11 then th11t the hou11t• or the tree wa11 not there out of pure
8
fancy, but was necessary because it made up part of the hidden figure.
When one discovers the structure or the fundamental form of a text, one has an analogous experience: certain details that seemed to be there only in an arbitrary way become necessary, because they make up an integral part of the traditional figure used. And just as one can contrast or compare the sense of the face and the sense of the countryside, one can compare the meaning of the traditional form or structure, considered in themselves, and that of the text which has borrowed them . . . We often have the impression when we read ancient authors that they write badly, that the sequence of ideas lacks coherence and connection. But it is precisely because the true figure escapes us that we do not perceive the form that renders all the details necessary . .. once discovered, the hidden form will make necessary all of the details that one often believed arbitrary or without importance.31
This description brilliantly captures the significance of placing the work studied in the framework of its literary genre, the transformation in understanding brought about when one moves from the insignificant and arbitrary to the meaningful and necessary. Hadot's methodological prescriptions can be fruitfully applied at virtually every level in the analysis of ancient thought.
I want to consider briefly a series of examples not taken up ·by Hadot in order to emphasize the depth and accuracy of his analogy. I have in mind the extraordinary work on mystical cryptography undertaken by Margherita Guarducci. By carefully delineating the historical and geographical context and by discovering "a coherent and rational system," 32 Guarducci was able to show that certain ancient graffiti, both pagan and Christian, contained hidden and almost dissimulated thoughts of a philosophical and religious character.33
The situation that results is precisely one in which phenomena that were neglected or unacknowledged now assume a profound significance. So, for example, she has demonstrated that the letters PE, the two initial letters of the name Petrus, sometimes take on the form of the characteristic monogram t or l that this monogram represents the keys of the first vicar of Christ, and that the monogram sometimes even visually resembles, with the three teeth of the E adjoined to the P, a key t.34 Peter's monogram can also be
-
adjoined to a monogram for Christ Cf>. so that we find on wall g of the Vatican this kind of graffiti, fl, expressing the indissoluble union of Peter and Christ.35 By unraveling the rational and coherent system formed by this mystical cryptography she can show that an inscription that previously found no plausible explanation can be clearly and convincingly explained. Thus the inscription found on a tomb (and shown in plate 1.1) wishes life in Christ and Peter to the deceased. The bi valence of the Greek rho and the Latin pi is used to superpose the monogram of Christ <£) with the letters PE thus forming,
Introduction
9
f which is inserted within the preposition in.36 Just as Hadot has described it, these are cases where "once discovered, the hidden form will make necessary all of the details that one often believed arbitrary or without sigrtificance." 37
This mystical cryptography can also be found in the pagan world, where a form that can seem to be intrinsically insignificant is transformed, once the hidden figure is discovered, into the expression of a philosophical doctrine.
Thus not only did the Pythagoreans recognize in the letter Y the initial letter of the word vriera and therefore the concept of "salvation"; they also used this letter to represent graphically the ancient concept of the divergent paths of virtue and vice, the doctrine that life presented a forking path and that one must choose between the path of virtue on the right, which will lead to peace, and the path of vice on the left, where one will fall into misery.38 A funereal stcle, datable f�om the first century AD, of a deceased man named "Pythagoras" exhibits a large Y that divides the stone into five sections (shown in plate 1.2). Each section contains various scenes inspired by Pythagorean doctrine.
In the center is an image of the deceased (or perhaps of his homonym, Pythagoras of Samo); to the right arc scenes personifying virtue, to the left arc scenes personifying dissoluteness. Guarducci concludes that it is "easy to recognize in the succession of these scenes that which the literary sources have handed down to us ... : the Pythagorean Y, symbol of the divergent paths of virtue and of vice, one of which brings ... eternal pleasure, the other ...
definitive ruin." ·19 Ir is indeed easy to come to this recognition, once one has uncovered and deciphered the genre of mystical cryptography. But if one fails to perceive the rigorously codified rules, one will see nothing of importance, one will be forced to resort to lapidary error and accident to explain away various features, one will find no coherence in many of the inscriptions."° The diff crence between recognizing profound significance and trivial error or arbitrariness will depend on whether the true form has escaped us or has transformed our understanding.41
One might well imagine that the endeavor to hide religious and philosophical thoughts within inscriptions and graffiti would require that we discover the hidden form necessary to give coherence and sense to these graffiti. But one might also assume that when we are confronted with extended philosophical writing, andcnt texts, like many modem ones, will exhibit their structure more or less on the surface. And then when we fail to discern this we
conclude, as Hadot remarks, that ancient authors "write badly, that the sequence of ideas lacks coherence and conncction."42 That the assumption on which this conclusion is based is false, that the structure of even extended ancient rhilosophical texts may not lie easily open to view, is clearly shown by Harlot's own discuvcry of the underlying structure or fundamental form of Marcus Aurelius' Mt'tlitfltim1s. Indeed, Hadot's description of the experience of seeing a IC'<I 1nmNfonn it11clf once one has dist."Ovcrcd iL'> hidden form very compellingly n•prl'Nl'nlN, yc11111 hcfol'l� thl' foci, hiN own dist.'O\•cry uhout Marcus Aurelius' text.
10
Introduction
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The first printed edition of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations appeared in 1559, accompanied by a Latin translation. The editor, "Xylander" (Wilhelm Holzmann), faced with what he saw as the total disorder of the text, conjectured that the Meditations, as presented in the manuscript he edited, were only disconnected extracts from the work of Marcus Aurelius, that Marcus' book had reached us in a mutilated, incomplete, disordered state.43